M.A. (Applied Linguistics) / It is usually only in times of major political crisis that there are revolutions in educational practice. Governments and institutions seem to invest heavily in language teaching programs during periods of conflict. South Africa is now experiencing drastical social, economical and political changes. in a "new" South Africa traditional ideas and now out-dated systems will most probably be replaced by systems yet to be developed and revitalised. This study aims to investigate ways in which the needs of adults who wish to learn Zulu as a foreign language may best be met. Various models were investigated and compared. Empirical research was carried out to deteimine the functional, situational and formal requirements of a custom-made, learner-centered Zulu course for adults. Research data showed a reasonably clear indication of the potential learners' communicative needs and served as a point of departure for creating a course curriculum. In the dissertation a survey of literature was carried out which included the following areas: language acquisition, foreign language teaching, curriculum design, and sociolinguistic concepts such as register and culture content in language courses. Finally, the various approaches in language teaching were considered with the main focus falling on the functional notion and the communicative approach. It is interesting to note what actually happens when a natural conversation (in the mother tongue) is taking place: attention is focused primarily on the content or purpose of communication, rather than on correct pronunciation, grammar, etc. Attention also falls on rules of conversation and cultural taboos. It is exactly these two aspects that should be borne in mind by the course writer, out of all the rich diversity of available methods, approaches, techniques, etc. In view of these findings a number of recommendations concerning course outline and context were made in the final chapter. These recommendations support the initial hypothesis that business persons prefer to learn Zulu for social and business purposes; that business people wish to acquire an elementary language proficiency; and that they prefer a variety of approaches and methods to a single specific method for the acquisition of an African language.

In this dissertation I attempt to examine “the experience of the perspective” of foreign students introduced into English classrooms in South Africa. I acknowledge the importance of focussing on the individual’s narrative, since it is “only through an unconscious synthetic activity of consciousness” that perspectives are connected together (Carspeken 1996:11), but, along with Freire, I believe that “generative themes” can only be investigated in “man-world relationships”. The researcher needs to examine the phenomenon in context of the world that it originated from, since “historical themes are never isolated , independent, disconnected or static” (Freire 1972: 73). In this dissertation I, therefore, carefully follow the classic phenomenological steps to analyse data from my respondents and then immediately contextualise it in term of literature about the learners background, the educational and political system in which they currently find themselves as well as general literature about the phenomenon of immigrants and learning of a second language. The premise underlying this research is the “taken-for-granted certainty” (Carspeken 1996:11) that there is something unique in the South African situation which results in foreign students experiencing the learning of English in a particular way within this context.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis was a critical analysis of students academic second language writing at Sokoine University of Agriculture. Student writing in English as a second language in higher education has excited much interest in the English as a Second Language writing research and discussion in Tanzania. The interest was motivated by frequent criticisms from examiners regarding students literacy performance in the English as a Second Language writing in the post primary and higher education where the language of instruction is English as is configured in the Tanzanian language policy. / South Africa

Magister Artium - MA / The purpose of this study was to determine the implication for learning for learners whose home language is different from the medium of instruction at school.The study is focused on a group of Afrikaans learners for whom English is not a foreign language. Rather, English is a language that they are in contact with on a daily level through the media, their peers and in the classroom. The study looked at why these learners find themselves in English classes when the language policy of the country makes provision for their specific home language in the classroom. It also tried to determine whether these learners experience problems in their learning as they shift from Afrikaans as a home language to an English medium of instruction in class. / South Africa

Magister Educationis - MEd / In recent years, advances in computer technology have motivated Chinese teachers to reassess computer use and consider it as a valuable part of daily foreign language learning and teaching. Software programmes, USB (Universal Serial Bus) technology, and computer networks are providing teachers with new methods of incorporating culture, grammar, and real language use in the classroom. Students gain access to audio, visual and textual information about the language through the use of computers. The aim of this study was to investigate vocational school English students and teachers concerns and behaviours about integrating information technology into English instruction. / South Africa

The thesis mainly concerns itself with an analysis of the present day pronunciation of Xhosa-English. The isolation and identification of the segmental phonemes and the phonemes of stress, intonation and transition form the core of the work. The author has attempted to give continuity by introducing a subsidiary theme, the Lado hypothesis as stated on page 1. In conformity with the the methodology imposed by the Lado formula, it was first necessary to establish two things: first, a standard background against which the characteristics of XEP could be compared, and secondly, to give briefly, but in sufficient detail for our purpose, the main phonological features of the mother tongue.

The study presented in this paper is a second language study of the acquisition of the English system of pronominalization by adult learners of English. It is a partial replication of Ingram and Shaw's (1981) first language acquisition study on the same topic. One hundred and eighty four subjects and twenty control subjects were administered a written task that involved making anaphoric assignments to pronouns in thirty five test sentences, representing seven different sentence construction types. Analysis of the data indicated that the two syntactic constraints of precedence and dominance played major roles in the anaphoric assignments made by all subjects. In addition, these two syntactic constraints were instrumental in delineating developmental stages in the acquisition process. A comparison of the response patterns displayed by the present study's subjects and those displayed by Ingram, and Shaw's subjects revealed a number of differences. These differences suggested that the acquisition process was not invariant and highly sequential in nature, but dynamic and highly creative, allowing a great deal of latitude in terms of the processing strategies employed. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

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